Large charities pay men 8 per cent more than women

The pay gap at the 568 charities with over 250 employees is eight per cent in favour of men - but the figure is higher for the 20 biggest charities, at 13 per cent, according to data published today.

The government has mandated that all charities with over 250 employees should report mean and median gender pay gaps, and the deadline to do so passed last night.

Figures compiled by David Kane, a freelance data scientist and researcher, looked at the 568 charities identified in the government’s gender pay gap data. They show that the average gender pay gap for charities is 8 per cent.

The average gender pay gap for all 10,000 organisations reporting is 14.5 per cent.

Kane’s data, which he has outlined in a blog post for Civil Society Media, showed that charities compare favourably to pay gap data in private companies, at 15 per cent, and the public sector at 13 per cent.

Top charities have bigger pay gap figures

An analysis of the largest 20 charities in the haysmacintyre / Charity Finance 100 Index showed a larger average figure of men being paid a mean average of 13.5 per cent. It also showed a median average of 9 per cent.

Average data for the proportion of women in each pay quartile showed that women make up 58.3 per cent of the top pay quartile, increasing to 67.9 per cent in the upper middle quartile, 69.4 per cent in the lower middle quartile, and peaking at 80.1 per cent in the lower quartile – the lowest paid members of staff.

The Canal & River Trust was the top 20 charity which had the highest ratio in favour of women. It pays women 3.6 per cent more than men according to the mean average, and 13.8 per cent more than men according to the median average.

Biggest gaps

The data shows that the charities with the largest pay gaps were almost all academy trusts and independent schools.

Among non-schools charities, PDSA had the highest median pay gap, followed by Marie Stopes International.

PDSA, which is number 55 in the Index, paid men a median average of 44.3 per cent more than women, and a mean figure of 28.6 per cent more than women.

A charity spokeswoman said that it is committed to reducing its gender pay gap, but that many job roles in the organisation did not appeal to men.

She said: "85 per cent of our workforce are female and we are proud that women are well represented across all our pay quartiles including the most senior roles in the organisation. Our gender pay gap is impacted by the low number of males in the organisation (15 per cent) and, in particular, a lack of male representation within our lower pay quartiles.

"This reflects a wider societal issue where women are more likely than men to apply for and work in roles such as care assistants, cleaners and clerical assistants."

Marie Stopes International had a median pay gap of 36.8 per cent, and a mean gender pay gap of 45.2 per cent.

The charity says that 58 per cent of charities in the top pay quartile are women, with this increasing to 83 per cent in the upper middle quartile, and 88 and 90 per cent in the lower middle and bottom quartile.

Caroline James Nock, vice president and HR director at Marie Stopes International, said that the figures were down to employment practices in its UK clinics, where most surgeons and anaesthetists were men, but most nurses and healthcare assistants are women.

She said this was linked to a broader trend in the healthcare sector.

"These figures are a clear challenge to do more,” she said.

She said that the charity's ambition is to close the gender pay gap of 7.7 per cent in its global support office, and said it is already exploring ways to do that.

The full analysis of the gender pay gaps of the top charities in the haysmacintyre / Charity Finance 100 Index will be in next month's Charity Finance magzine. Subscribe here.

Civil Society Media is hosting its Charity People & Culture conference on 18 September 2018, which will include a session on gender pay gaps. For more information and to book, click here.